An individual developer can build some cool apps but a team of professional developers can build amazing things. A small, professional software team today can build things that used to take a huge enterprise to build 20 years ago.

Knowing that, will it surprise you to know that most software developers in India today still make, manage and collaborate on software the old fashioned way: through email, excel and local repositories? Collaborating on big software ideas and projects as a team can be incredibly challenging and costly, without the right tools.

Atlassian, an enterprise software company with the purpose of ‘helping teams work together efficiently,” saw the current state of affairs in India as a great opportunity to improve one of the largest software hubs in the world. Enter Bitbucket. With Bitbucket, individual coders become professionals and teams of professional developers can build amazing things by stripping away manual and mundane tasks.

Our task was to create awareness about the platform and generate conversions to Atlassian’s coding ecosystem.

To make it happen, we launched a rich campaign led by a digital film (watch here) that brought the attitude and workflow of a professional “rock-star” software engineer to life. To support the video, we ran digital banners on the parts of the web frequented by them. The result was a memorable campaign with colourful 8-bit visuals and simple, insightful messaging in the language of the Indian software professional.

The “Code Like a Pro. Code with Bitbucket” campaign over-delivered on every parameter, from clicks to conversions, effectively launching a transformation in the way one of the largest software hubs of the world creates software.

The Strategy

Business Objective

An experimental campaign to build preference of Bitbucket as a primary cloud repository tool and increase penetration by reaching out to the untapped market in India.

Around 56% knew about cloud based repositories. 44% didn’t. Awareness was low.

A majority preferred Github for Cloud because they have more awareness for the product, and SVN on local servers for security reasons.

Largely, small teams still write, manage and deploy code the old fashioned way: Through E-mail, Excel and public code repositories like GitHub.

Almost all responded that they strive to stay updated with new ways to better their code and become more efficient.

With all these learnings in mind, our strategy for Bitbucket was:

Target the relevant audience : To reach out to all developers, including Small & Medium Enterprises, Startups and Students, who were using local host versioning tools like SVN, making a compelling case for them to shift to Bitbucket by highlighting Bitbucket’s pro coding features, easy setup, integrations and UI, and the fact that it is available for free on the cloud.

To celebrate them : This was further sharpened by our research-led understanding of a software engineer. Their aim is to consume everything, know everything, be able to code anything. They also wants their software to run like that of a pro; without glitches. Our task was to introduce Bitbucket to them as force multiplier for their creativity and ability. Our route simply clicked into place: Code like a pro. Code with Bitbucket.

Creativity + Innovation

Atlassian tonality of communication has always been to the point, practical and factual but with a wink –humility and touch of humor.

The task in hand for creative was to keep the communication direct, feature led and to speak the language of the correct audiences. Our route simply clicked into place: Code like a pro. Code with Bitbucket.

We studied the Indian software developers. You’d just imagine them to be geeks, but as it turns out, they don’t. They see themselves as creative professionals, not just technical ones. Most importantly, they are always looking for smarter ways to get the same flawless quality with less effort. New ways to make 30 hours of work count for 60.

To create a truly effective communication, we had to build credibility with software developers by demonstrating that we truly understood their world. We truly got into their skin to understand what their problems are. This is what allowed us to craft messages that helped Bitbucket’s communication stand out from the dense, technical jargon that the software world is known for. For example, instead of just telling our audience about the cloud feature, we went a step further and said, “Aiming your software for the stars? Get a head-start on the cloud.” It was simple, it was direct, it spoke TO the audience, and that’s why it worked.

Our approach, combined with a retro 8-bit colour palette that every software engineer remembers from their first video-game consoles, not only grabbed the attention of software developers all over India, but also got them to believe that Bitbucket truly understood the making of professional-grade software better than anyone else.

The Execution

There’s an inside joke in the software world: A software engineer spends 40 hours a week at work the computer. Then he goes home and spends his free time, still on the computer. It’s funny because it’s true. Our target audience loves the internet, spending most of their lives just surfing, learning, searching. It’s where they live, breathe and exist. What better way to reach and convince them about how Bitbucket can make them better professionals than going where they are and speaking in their language?

To do this, we created an insightful to-the-point video (watch here) by delving deep into the real methodologies of professional coders, promoting it through paid properties on display and social. The video demonstrated a thorough understanding of the rules every professional coder internalizes to deliver professional work: from being able to work well with others to always searching for ways to code smarter and better.